


resistance

by epiproctan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A tiny bit of smut, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Morning Sex, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:12:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8277272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/pseuds/epiproctan
Summary: the war is over. life goes on.





	

            i.

The sun rises the same as it did yesterday.

It pours in through the window, filling the room from the top down with a golden light that sloshes and shifts with the hour. Someone forgot to close the curtains last night. It’s hot. It’s hot today like it was yesterday too, enough so that the blankets are in a rumpled mound at the foot of the bed. Humidity weighs the air down, pressing in. The ocean breathes, as heard through the cracked-open window. Its scent carries.

Lance sweats enough that his skin is damp and his hair is matted against his forehead. It’s his own fault. It’s his own fault and he won’t do anything to make it better because even if he dies of heatstroke here in his own bed he’s not letting go of the goddamn furnace that is Keith. Lance has gotten better at sleeping through the night while wrapped around him, even here back on Earth. When they were in the castle it wasn’t so bad. The ship was always kept just a little too chilly, something about Altean temperature preferences. Burrowing into Keith’s warmth on those nights when it was too easy to remember that they really were surrounded by a cold, dark infinity was relieving.

Space nights.

He stops his train of thought, rewinds, pretends he never thought of it at all. Instead he focuses on the shadows of palm leaves dancing against the wall. The sharp tang of salt in the air. Keith’s very real breathing, in and out, _in and out_. It’s in rhythm with the ocean outside the window, with Lance’s heartbeat, with the pulsing heat of the sun.

It isn’t so bad now. _It isn’t so bad._

Keith stirs, woken by the violent vehemence of Lance’s thoughts. He breathes a sigh from between lips that have kissed Lance for years, for light years. Then he pushes himself even further up into the spaces of Lance’s body, draws his arms tighter around himself.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Lance laughs in his ear.

“Shut up,” Keith replies, his speech slurred into his pillow.

Lance runs his open palm down the side of Keith’s skin, following the rise and fall of muscle. He comes to rest at his hip, thumb against the bone, marking its curve over and over. Keith is all stubborn hard lines. Here, too. He twists in Lance’s grasp, turning his head to face him, and aimlessly presses his mouth against the nearest patch of skin he can find.

With a hand on his cheek Lance rights him, guiding Keith from his jawline to his lips. Keith won’t open his eyes this early but he does open in other ways, his arms spreading to catch any part of Lance that he can reach, his hands finding places to cup around and tug inwards. Lance lazily finds his way into Keith’s mouth, brushing too-long locks behind his ear, playing with the feel of them between his fingers.

They shift together, gradual and even, taking their time. Lance explores Keith’s body with his fingers like he has infinitely before. It never gets old. Keith’s skin feels newly smooth each time, the stretch of his muscles endlessly fascinating, the ridges of his bones always blissful and addictive. Lance knows this body better than he does his own, but every touch is invaluable. And Keith roams, his hands somehow always finding fresh places to exploit, to electrify.

When Lance fucks into Keith, Keith just about goes limp in his arms. Keith, by nature, is hard and solid, resistant, firm. But the heat of the morning sun melts him, and Lance’s hands have weathered him into something slow and pliant. Barely awake enough they rock, unhurried, legato, Keith’s mouth full of sleepy moans, Lance’s arms full of Keith. Lance brushes Keith’s hair away from the back of his neck and leaves long, lingering kisses there.

Keith’s hand tightens around Lance’s when he gives a full-body shudder. Lance guides him through it, years and years of experience teaching him how to make this good for Keith, good for himself. He’s not long after, all the warmth bursting inside of him. He calls Keith’s name and Keith is there.

They relax into the sheets, the glow of sunlight spreading over them. Keith nuzzles into Lance’s shoulder and Lance laughs.

It isn’t so bad. _It isn’t so bad_.

 

            ii.

Lance’s family is loud.

There are so many of them, so it’s not their fault. They have to be, to be heard. Volume comes naturally to them in a way that Keith can understand. But they’re loud.

Absent parents are not loud. Deserts are not loud. Space is not loud.

Lance’s palm is still cool against his own, even after all these years. Lance knows that sometimes the loud is not good. Lance, who spent so much time in space seeking the loud, tugging it out of Keith at every opportunity. He was born in it, born into it, became it, carried it. He couldn’t survive without it and found a way to make it.

He’s sitting next to Keith at the kitchen table. Not their kitchen table, but the one down the street. Lance’s mother’s kitchen table, which seats six on paper but actually seats ten and a cat. Somewhere in the house someone is singing, rhythmless and off-key. Somewhere else voices are raised, in argument? In banter? It’s hard to tell. And here before them the kitchen is all noise and color.

Lance silently watches them, his mother, his sisters, and Keith silently watches Lance. He watches as the light sets in his eyes and the smile wears off, as it always does after a little while. He tightens his hand around Lance’s, pushes against him in an unphysical way, and Lance looks up from wherever his mind has taken him. He meets Keith’s eyes. Smirks.

“Hey, Mullet. Like something you see?”

Keith rolls his eyes and looks at the refrigerator. “In your dreams.”

Easy. Normal. It’s always been this way and it always can be.

Here on this island they’re unbothered. No one knows. No one touches them or Lance’s family. Sometimes Keith tries to contain his world in a box that surrounds just that. Just himself, just himself and Lance, just himself and Lance and the people who make Lance happy. But the box is made of glass, and glass is clear, and glass shatters.

Lance pulls his hand out of Keith’s and stands, giving him a pat on the shoulder. He goes to where his mother is wiping the sweat off her forehead in front of the stove and takes her wooden spoon away from her. He shoos her out of the room with a bump of his hip. Keith rises too, grabs a knife from the stand and fits himself next to Lance’s older sister against the counter. She pushes a pile of tomatoes towards him. In this family, he’s the best at chopping them.

“Thanks, Keith,” Lance’s sister says. She smiles at him. “You know, I’m really glad you’re here.”

 _“We’re all really glad you’re here,”_ is what they say. Is what they always say. It’s too loud.

“Me too,” says Lance from behind them, before whacking Keith’s butt with the spoon. “So I can prove I’m way better at cooking than you _again_.”

“Wash that!” Lance’s sister cries when he tries to put it back in the sauce, but Lance ducks away laughing. She chases, and they stampede through the house like a thunderstorm.

Keith brings the knife down through the soft tomato flesh. _Chop. Chop. Chop._

 

            iii.

“Do you think—,” Lance begins to ask in a whisper.

“No,” Keith says.

The stars are distant. They can pick out the ones they know, the constellations they memorized in their youth. Familiarity doesn’t mean friendliness. These stars aren’t on their side. They’re unaware.

It doesn’t matter what Lance is asking. The answer is always no.

 _It isn’t so bad_.

Keith leans back into Lance’s chest, his head tipped onto his shoulder. The stars burn into his eyes, so he closes them, but he can still feel their pinpricks on the back of his eyelids.

Lance holds him tighter as he begins to cry.

 

            iv.

The rain at the beach comes down with vindictive rage. It hisses loud in Lance’s ear and stings where it bounces against his skin. If his clothes weren’t glued to his body with rainwater the wind would be snatching at them, pulling him, tugging. As it is he sways in its buffeting, and the sea yanks at his ankles with every swell.

It’s gray out across the sky, across the water, but in the distance he can see the promise of blue. A passing storm, the kind that keeps the palm trees thrashing. He squints against the pelting drops and waits.

Something approaches from behind. Years’ worth of battle have Lance tensing, reaching for a bayard that isn’t there. _Defend or kill_ , every muscle ready. But it’s a short-lived spark. He feels him coming and a relief, a relaxation spreads over him from his scalp to his heels.

“Don’t be a baby,” Keith murmurs, sharp in his ear. He’s wrapping himself around him, arms at his waist, chin on his shoulder. They stick together, skin and the clothes separating them, attached by the rain running over their bodies. Lance can feel every inch of Keith’s warmth pressed against his back.

“It’s a good habit to have, okay?” Lance says. “What’re you gonna do when you get attacked from behind?”

Keith is nibbling at his ear, his breath hot in contrast to the cooling rain. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “We’re safe here.”

Lance lets the tips of his fingers drag over Keith’s exposed forearms. There’s a power there, in his arms, dangerous but sleeping. These arms wrapped around him know bloodshed. These hands under his own have killed.

“I have good instincts anyway,” Keith says. His voice is low, shared only between the two of them and not even the sand under their feet. “I’m not about to take my boyfriend’s head off when he comes up behind me.”

“Yeah? Then what are you going to do when your boyfriend does _this_?”

He twists, pulls, manages to get both of them down onto the sand. Keith is prepared for it, of course, taking the impact in his shoulder instead of the broad of his back, but he still ends up under Lance, caged by his body. The surf washes up around their legs, leaving traces of foam on their clothes, but they’re already soaked, and when the sand touches them it sticks and coats their skin.

Keith retaliates, rolling the both of them to the side, but Lance knows every move of Keith’s like he knows the feel of piloting Blue. He keeps rolling them even as Keith tries to brace against it, and ends up back on top, feet splashing in the water. Keith unseats him with a buck of his hips— _unfair_ —and swings Lance down towards the ground hard. Lance catches himself with his elbow before he hits, catches Keith too, around the waist, tosses him off and to the side.

As expected Keith bounces back, crashes into Lance. Their motions could be choreographed. Easy. Normal. It’s always been this way and it always can be. Keith’s breathing hard from between his grinning lips, and they’re chest-to-chest now, Keith’s entire weight pressing down on Lance. Lance returns his smile, defeated and dizzy.

When they kiss it’s gritty, and rainwater drips from Keith’s hair into Lance’s eyes. He doesn’t really mind, even if he complains about sand in his mouth later.

 

            v.

“The war isn’t over until we’re dead,” Keith says.

Lance looks at him, wordless.

“Shut up,” Keith says. “ _Shut up_.”

 

            vi.

Lance rolls over.

It surprises him enough to make him open his eyes. He shouldn’t be able to roll over. That’s Keith’s spot. If he rolls there he’s usually met with a lump of drop-out fighter pilot and a whack to the shoulder. Now there’s just mussed sheets and fading warmth.

He feels for him and Keith isn’t far away. In fact, when Lance props himself up on his forearm and lets his eyes adjust to the soft shadows of the room he sees him. The moonlight shafts between the window frame and across his face, striping his nose and lips and chin and throat. From the waist down he’s naked, above he’s draped in Lance’s favorite stretched-out sleep shirt. His face upturned, his eyes hide in the darkness but focus on the sky.

“Keith?”

“I’m going outside,” Keith says, too loud and too quick. The room is subtle and gentle and he is anything but.

Lance trips out of bed, getting caught in his own lankiness but successfully snagging Keith’s wrist before he can escape.

“Are you an idiot?” he snaps. He holds tight around Keith’s wristbone, easily encircled in his long fingers. With his other hand he wrenches the thick curtains closed, like that can stop what’s outside from getting in.

“Let _go_.” Keith tries to jerk out of Lance’s grasp, but years of battle have turned Lance strong; years of loving have turned Keith weak. He glares at Lance instead, a bare pressure on his wrist as he stands as far away from him as Lance’s grip will allow.

“No! I’m not just going to let you go out there!” Lance keeps his distance, but tightens his fingers. “You saw ships, didn’t you?”

Keith’s eyes burn, even in the dark. This is the only answer Lance needs. His silence inflexible, his eyebrows furrowed and low, his shoulders strained and ready, his eyes fire. Keith is eternally a jack-in-the-box, wound to the penultimate note, now more than ever. He only needs a light touch to spring.

“Galra?” Lance asks.

A terse nod.

“What do you think you can do?”

Keith rolls his fingers into fists and flexes the muscles in his arms. His teeth grind together, he sets his jaw.

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing.”

Lance’s grip loosens, and he lets their arms fall between them. Keith’s hands are still balled up, his shoulders still stiff and raised. But he doesn’t move from the center of the bedroom, his eyes now on the floor.

There’s nothing he can do.

“Come back to bed,” Lance says. He fords the empty space and slips his arms around Keith’s torso, wedging himself into the valleys of his body. Keith doesn’t resist, and after a moment slumps against him, letting himself be supported back to the mattress.

The sound and the feel of something enormous and looming keeps them awake. But they hide against each other’s skin and seal their glass box shut.

It isn’t so bad.

 

            vii.

Lance waits at the water’s edge to see the patches of clear sky on the horizon.

Keith waits at the window for the stars to get closer.

They look for each other because it’s easy. Normal. It’s always been this way and it always can be.

It isn’t so bad.

 _It isn’t so bad_.

**Author's Note:**

> i needed a break from my longer fics and i wanted to write something fluffy in a dark setting so i whipped this up real fast
> 
> it’s (intentionally) a little difficult to figure out from the fic itself but it’s supposed to take place in a future where the galra defeated voltron and won the war, and lance and keith are now living on earth. i didn’t want to focus on that in this fic because i just wanted it to be about their relationship, but as i was writing it i kept coming up with more and more context, like where the rest of the paladins are at, how klance ended up on earth, etc. let me know if anything’s particularly confusing. 
> 
>  
> 
> [music rec](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPE9uSFFxrI)


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